I can’t stand metal. Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I think vocals should have a melody, or at least a couple notes.

The preceding quote is comment on my good friend Joe Bonica’s Facebook. Joe and myself were gleefully celebrating the leak of Canadian progressive metal band, Protest the Hero’s 3rd studio album, Scurrilous which is perhaps the greatest rebuttal in recent memory to the commenter’s assertion about metal.
All the aspects of previous releases remain or are augmented. There’s the prerequisite guitar pyrotechnics weaving in and out of fantastic busy but groove focused drumming. There’s still the virtuoso stylings of Arif Mirabdolbaghi on bass which brings to mind Juan Alderete of the Mars Volta more than Cliff Burton. But what is most apparent on this record is the time vocalist Rody Walker has put into crafting vocal hooks that grab the listener and propel the songs forward.
Often metal of this style suffers from a lack of structure and songwriting but thanks to Walker, Scurrilous avoids this trend. The record marks his excursion into writing lyrics for the band and the results are wonderful. While previous works relied on post-modern storytelling and examinations of goddess worship, Walker chooses to examine more immediate concerns; love, artistic integrity, alcoholism, and battles with cancer. The elaborate fictions of past albums are engrossing, but Walker’s emotional delivery gives his stories of personal triumph and tragedy greater poignancy and emotional weight than any of the band’s previous output. Married with the spectacular performance of the “four or five guys who stand behind him on the stage every night”, Walker’s performance has made Scurrilous an album I must listen to from start to finish every time. And that is the mark of perfection. Please buy Scurrilous as I will when it is released on March 22nd. This is how metal should be written.